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This is a featured called Long Exposure Noise Reduction.
To cancel out noise the camera will close the shutter and take an equally long exposure again, this time capturing a black image with only the electrical noise on it. This information is then used to reduce the noise on the original exposure.
In the camera settings you can disable the Noise Reduction ...

So I first shoot with ISO 1600 and shutter speed set to 1/125 second and then I shoot with ISO 3200 and shutter speed set to 1/250 second. The amount of light should be identical and indeed both shots look properly exposed and exposed the same way.
The amount of light is not identical. You let twice as much light into the camera at 1/125 second than at 1/...

Body - you can get better high ISO performance from a full frame body, if you're willing to rent one. That's worth a couple of stops.
Lens - another couple of stops if you buy/hire an f/1.4 or f/1.8 lens, especially if you're shooting at the long end of your zoom at f/5.6
Light - in the picture you've given as an example, you seem to be standing in the dark....

Look up Long Exposure Noise Reduction in your camera's manual. Depending on the model, you may or may not be able to continue taking photos. Some models do the processing immediately after the exposure. Some allow you to continue to take exposures, and then do the processing.
This feature uses dark frame subtraction. The idea being that if you expose a ...

Being a man of science, I did some scholar-googling and came across some articles.
Too long, didn't read:
None of the scientific articles I found give a clear definition of "high ISO". However, they all link high ISO with higher noise levels. Therefore, I would say that high ISO is completely dependent on subjective criteria and the camera in question.
My ...

If the result you are looking for is a photograph, the short answer is no. The same equipment won't give better results with video than it can with stills.
I think the apparent difference is due to exactly one thing: resolution. Try taking one of your still frames, resampling down so it's 1080 pixels tall, and then comparing.
There isn't any inherent low-...

You misunderstand how exposure compensation works.
Exposure compensation is not an actual physical thing the camera uses to control light - there are only 3 real things that control the amount of light: Aperture, Shutter speed and ISO.
Exposure compensation is a way to tell the camera in one of the auto/semi-auto modes you want to override the light meter ...

The short answer: It's darker then you think it is. Here's a depiction of various brightnesses and an an exposure value which nominally will give correct exposure at that brightness. Note that these are overlaid — the area of the whole circle is what matters, not the separated rings.
This seems shocking, because our eyes are so good at adjusting, but ...

Your idea is on the right basic track — you could meter at the limit of your camera, and then change to what the camera thinks is underexposure. ISO 3200 is actually only one stop faster than 1600 (each doubling is one stop). You say "points", and it may be that your lens has click points at half stop, in which case yes, two clicks would be right. (If you're ...

Assuming all other exposure settings with and without flash are equal, then using flash means you are adding light to the scene. Increased light in the scene means increased light down the lens, which means more light at the sensor. That means you have a higher signal to noise ratio at the sensor, which generally means less noise.
Signal to Noise ratio, or ...

There has been an improvement between the 40D and 650D, but not that great. Certainly less than a stop. You'll get a far far greater improvement in image quality by getting more light onto the sensor. There are a number of ways to achieve this:
Depending on what lens you're currently using you may be able to get a three stop improvement by switching to a ...

For some sort of photography high ISO is very important.
At some point the picture quality does not matter as much as having at least taken a photo, even if it is very noisy.
News journalists or street photographers, who want to capture the moment do not have the time to light up the scene. Therefore they accept the noise to get the shot.
High ISO is also ...

I believe it may be a flaw in your testing. Raising ISO should not be getting you a higher signal to noise ratio (or usable dynamic range).
You are raising the noise floor, without any corresponding increase in dynamic range at the bright end. Thus you should be left with overall lower dynamic range. It would not be possible to go the other way.
Is it ...

Exposure compensation is just another means of changing either shutter or aperture. I is not some fourth component of exposure, there are still only three: ISO, Shutter Speed, Aperture. If you have manually selected an aperture, changing EC will reduce shutter speed. If you have manually selected a shutter speed, changing EV will increase the size of the ...

ASA Film Speed provides a simple enough answer for this. ISO 400 was considered standard high sensitivity film with anything above that being very high sensitivity film.
It would be easy to argue that anything above 400 ISO is High ISO. The real question is whether or not to include 400 in that or not. I would argue 400 should not be included as high ISO as ...

The cheap option: create monochrome images. (some may even look great in monochrome)
The image you have shown there is mostly lit by tungsten light. This light contains very little blue light, and therefore the blue channel in the image will have a very poor signal to noise ratio. When you perform white balance correction, the blue channel will be amplified ...

Darktable has a great profile-based noise removal tool. You may give it a try if your sensor is already supported. If not, you can submit an own profile. See http://www.darktable.org/2012/12/profiling-sensor-and-photon-noise/ for all the glory details.
It is especially smoothing with the option "wavelets".

SImple answer: not to a measurable extent.
Difficult answer: A high ISO-equivalent setting cranks the analog gain up. More gain requires more power per electron (or milliVolt if you prefer), but there's going to be far fewer electrons in each pixel bucket. A low ISO-equiv. setting will apply less gain to more electrons.
That said, if you're in ...

What is the point of very high ISO capability?
To take pictures without as much light.
Just because a camera is capable of shooting at ISO 25600 (the actual ISO amplification limit of the EOS 6D) doesn't mean one has to shoot at ISO 25600, or even at ISO 6400. It's perfectly OK to use ISO 100 when that works. But as technology advances and we can get ...

It would take a rather brightly lit room to get your ISO down that low. I've got a low hanging, 5 light fixture in a small white room and I just metered f/3.2, 1/60 and ISO 1250.
So, bright sun is definitely going to help, but ISO 200 or 100 inside, at f/3.2, without flash is an impossible dream.
You either need a faster lens (like a f/1.4) - but that is ...

The answer to this question is that you have taken a wide ranging collection of terms and taken a very narrow range of meanings for them. If you use the meanings that many people do then the question fades away.
Your individual assumptions would be considered invalid in most cases my many photographers and, taken as a whole, would be considered invalid by ...

Beyond the sensationalist title, I think what you are asking is simply - Are my results typical?
To which I'd answer, yes your results are typical and expected.
I don't often try to shoot in the woods, in November, right before sunset, handheld, but if I did - I would be well aware that I am pushing the capabilities of my equipment no matter if I have a f/...

I can see two possibilities that aren't related to post-processing either in or out of camera.
First, increase the light, either through changing the scene or by using wider aperture and longer shutter — and thereby lowering the required ISO. This doesn't seem exactly in the spirit of your question, though.
So, second: let the darker scenes be themselves. ...

High ISO can be a factor (see Is there a technique to increase saturation in high ISO?), but I suspect that another effect you are seeing is the decrease of natural-full spectrum light relative to the fluorescent light source — see How does light quality vary between fluorescent (CFL) and incandescent? (with sunlight being roughly the same as incandescent in ...

With the parents permission, you are going to get the best results by putting a remotely triggered flash unit on her balcony. Then you expose for the ambient and adjust flash power to light her properly -- at dusk this could be a really cool shot.
This is much cheaper than a 300mm f/2.8 and will greatly expand your capabilities as a photographer. Pick up a ...

High ISO performance has greatly improved over the last few years but if you scrape the bottom of the barrel you wont see much improvement!
While test results for the T4i are not out yet, if you compare the T3i to the 40D at DXO lab, their scores is almost identical (54 vs 64) and looking at the low-light scores in particular, you will see 793 vs 703, ...

This problem is caused by electromagnetic interference generated by the SWM in many Nikon lenses, and possibly by the camera's own electronics as well.
There are cases where Canon lenses with USMs have caused banding. See this dpreview forum thread for an instance of sensor banding caused by a USM lens mounted on a Canon DSLR.

If you have noise reduction completely turned off then the effect of using a high ISO setting on battery life should be minimal.
Most of the increased power demand of using high ISO settings is due to the increased processing required to implement noise reduction. Even when saving in raw format, the camera still processes the raw data to produce a jpeg ...